A view of the tour’s Craftsman-style John D. Harvey House. Image: Jenn Rose Smith / Preservation Austin
Preservation Austin’s Homes Tour celebrates its 30th anniversary this April, and to mark the occasion the 2023 edition of this flagship fundraising event for Austin’s own historic stewardship nonprofit offers an inside look at historic homes all over town — with 11 properties total, the tour will be a two-day event, with viewings of six homes in Central and East Austin on April 22 and five homes in West and South Austin on April 23. The historic properties chosen for the tour include a range of styles dating back as far as the 1850s and concluding in the midcentury era.
Tickets for the event are now on sale, with VIP tickets offering access to an exclusive preview party on April 18. Here’s a look at a few of the event’s most fascinating homes:
Lydia Street
Image: Kara Mosher / Preservation Austin
Located in the Robertson/Stuart & Mair Historic District of East Austin’s Guadalupe Neighborhood, a former rail depot building originally built in Granger, Texas, in 1904 now serves as the home of design professionals François and Julie Lévy, relocated to their lot on Lydia Street in 2003 and rehabilitated as a residence. It’s the most fascinating story of adaptive reuse on the tour.
East Austin’s “House of Dreams”
Image: Preservation Austin
Known as Casa de Sueños, meaning “House of Dreams,” this brightly-colored home overlooking East Seventh Street is an example of East Austin folk architecture, built by bricklayer Geraro Briones between 1947 until the late 1970s.
The home’s unusual decorative concrete motifs followed Genaro’s collaboration with Mexican-born craftsman Dionicio Rodriguez, an expert in concrete faux bois, literally meaning “false wood” in French. Faux bois is a technique in which concrete structures resemble rustic wood or pieces of fallen or decaying trees. The formally rigid material gives the impression of being malleable and organic in form, to magical effect.
— Preservation Austin
Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1998, the structure now serves as a design showroom — but although it’s no longer occupied as a home, this former residence remains an East Austin architectural wonder.
Yarrington House
Image: Jenn Rose / Preservation Austin
An 1889 residence constructed in the Queen Anne style by merchant Arthur H. Yarrington in the Fairview Park subdivison of Travis Heights, the Yarrington House fell into decline after being converted into a boarding house during the Great Depression. By 1999 when artist Elizabeth Chapin and her husband Nathaniel bought the home, the decaying home was infested with raccoons — but a rehabilitation completed in 2014 by local architects Clayton Korte and Duckworth Custom Homes returned the structure to its former glory.
…the project restored a period-appropriate main entrance, reinforced the rounded turret, and preserved Corinthian columns and historic wood windows. Sited on a prominent corner lot, the yard features an artist studio and an outdoor pool by Aqua Builders. Today the home’s picturesque details compliment its vibrant, art-driven interiors–creating a wonderfully eclectic ambiance, inside and out.
— Preservation Austin
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